Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
When I took on a Shopify website revamp for a client drowning in their own success, I walked into what most UX designers would call a nightmare scenario. With over 1000 products in their catalog, their conversion rate was bleeding—not because the products were bad, but because finding the right one felt like searching for a needle in a digital haystack.
The data told a brutal story: visitors were using the homepage as nothing more than a doorway. They'd land, immediately click to "All Products," then get lost in an endless scroll. The homepage had become irrelevant.
Every "best practices" guide preached about hero banners, featured collections, and carefully curated product sections. But here's what I discovered: when everyone in your industry follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. Sometimes the most effective strategy comes from looking outside your industry entirely.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional feature page structures fail with large catalogs
The unconventional homepage-as-catalog approach that doubled conversions
How to implement AI-powered categorization at scale
When to break rules vs. when to follow them
Industry-specific adaptations for SaaS and ecommerce platforms
Industry Reality
What every UX designer has already heard
Walk into any design agency or read any conversion optimization blog, and you'll hear the same gospel about feature page structure. The conventional wisdom has become so entrenched that most businesses follow it blindly:
The "Proven" Homepage Formula:
Hero section with compelling headline and CTA
"Featured Products" or "Our Collections" showcase
Social proof section with testimonials
"About Us" or company story section
Footer with additional navigation
This structure exists because it works—in specific contexts. For businesses with 10-50 products, this approach makes perfect sense. You can curate, highlight your best sellers, and guide customers through a thoughtful journey.
The problem? Most UX advice comes from agencies working with startups or small businesses. When you scale to 1000+ products, this "proven" structure becomes a bottleneck. Customers don't want curation—they want discovery. They don't need education about your brand—they need to find their specific solution quickly.
Yet businesses keep following this formula because it's what "successful" companies do. They're optimizing for the wrong metrics, creating beautiful ghost towns that look impressive but don't convert. The real issue isn't the design—it's the fundamental mismatch between structure and user intent.
This is where conventional wisdom becomes conventional failure.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The challenge landed on my desk with a clear problem: a Shopify e-commerce site with less than 2% conversion rates, despite having solid products and decent traffic. But this wasn't your typical small store—we were dealing with over 1000 products in their catalog.
My client was a B2C retailer who had grown rapidly but was stuck. Their homepage followed every "best practice" in the book: beautiful hero section, carefully curated "Featured Products," customer testimonials, and a clean navigation structure. It looked like something you'd see in a design portfolio.
But the analytics told a different story. I spent hours analyzing user behavior data and discovered a frustrating pattern: visitors were treating the homepage like a lobby they needed to escape from. The heatmaps showed people scrolling past the featured products, ignoring the curated collections, and immediately clicking "All Products" or using the search bar.
The "Featured Products" section had a 0.3% click-through rate. The carefully crafted collections? Even worse. Users were voting with their clicks—they wanted access to the full catalog, not a curated subset.
My first attempt followed conventional optimization wisdom. I A/B tested different hero headlines, rearranged the featured products, and improved the collection thumbnails. We saw marginal improvements—nothing to celebrate. The fundamental problem remained: the structure was working against user behavior, not with it.
That's when I realized I was solving the wrong problem. Instead of trying to make the traditional structure work better, I needed to question the structure itself.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's what I actually implemented—and why my client almost fired me initially.
The Radical Restructure:
I completely abandoned the traditional homepage formula and turned the homepage into the catalog itself. Instead of teasing products, I displayed them. Instead of hiding the inventory behind navigation, I made it the hero.
Step 1: Killed the Traditional Sections
Removed the hero banner entirely
Deleted "Featured Products" sections
Eliminated "Our Collections" blocks
Stripped everything that stood between visitors and products
Step 2: Built an AI-Powered Mega-Menu
With 1000+ products, navigation becomes critical. I implemented an AI workflow that automatically categorized new products across 50+ categories. This wasn't just better organization—it made product discovery possible without leaving the navigation menu.
The system analyzed product attributes, descriptions, and metadata to assign categories automatically. When new products were added, they were instantly organized without manual intervention.
Step 3: Homepage as Product Gallery
The new homepage displayed 48 products directly—no teasing, no curation, just products. I added only one additional element: a testimonials section below the product grid. That's it.
The layout was responsive, the loading was optimized, and every product linked directly to its page. We turned the homepage into what users actually wanted: immediate access to the catalog.
Step 4: Smart Filtering Integration
I integrated advanced filtering options that worked seamlessly with the product display. Users could narrow down the 48 visible products by category, price, color, or any custom attribute without leaving the homepage.
This created a dynamic homepage that functioned like a mini-search engine, adapting to user preferences in real-time.
Navigation Revolution
AI-powered categorization across 50+ categories eliminated manual product organization and made discovery intuitive for users browsing large catalogs.
Conversion Metrics
Homepage conversion doubled while maintaining the same traffic quality and user demographics across all product categories.
User Behavior Shift
Time spent on homepage increased 340% as it became a functional discovery tool rather than a brief stopping point.
Technical Implementation
Responsive grid system with optimized loading ensured 48 products displayed seamlessly across all devices without performance issues.
The transformation was immediate and measurable:
Conversion Rate: Doubled from ~2% to ~4% within the first month of implementation. More importantly, this wasn't a temporary spike—the improvement sustained over six months.
User Engagement: Homepage became the most viewed AND most used page on the site. Previously, it was just a brief stopping point. Now users spent real time discovering products.
Time to Purchase: Significantly decreased as the friction between arrival and product discovery was eliminated. Users could find relevant products immediately instead of navigating through multiple collection pages.
Unexpected Outcome: The testimonials section, now positioned below actual products instead of theoretical benefits, performed 5x better than when it was standalone. Context matters—social proof works better when customers can immediately see what they're being convinced to buy.
The client went from questioning my approach to asking how we could apply this thinking to their other properties. What started as a risky experiment became their new standard for large-catalog websites.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This project taught me that "best practices" are often just "common practices" that haven't been challenged recently. Here are the key insights:
1. Industry Standards Are Starting Points, Not Finish Lines
When everyone follows the same playbook, differentiation comes from intelligent deviation, not perfect execution of the standard approach.
2. User Behavior Trumps Design Theory
Analytics don't lie. When users consistently behave differently than your design intends, the design is wrong—not the users.
3. Scale Changes Everything
What works for 50 products fails catastrophically for 1000+ products. Solutions must scale with complexity, not fight against it.
4. Context Determines Effectiveness
Social proof, testimonials, and trust signals work better when positioned contextually rather than following template structures.
5. AI Enables Structure, Not Just Content
Smart categorization and organization can solve structural problems that manual curation can't handle at scale.
6. Friction Kills Conversions More Than Poor Copy
Every extra click, every additional page, every moment of confusion costs customers. The best feature page structure is the one that removes steps, not adds polish.
7. Challenge Assumptions Systematically
Before optimizing existing structures, question whether the structure itself serves the user's actual goals.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS products with multiple features or complex offerings:
Replace feature lists with interactive demos directly on the homepage
Use progressive disclosure—show features as users engage rather than overwhelming upfront
Consider use-case based navigation instead of feature-based organization
Test whether your users want to explore features or solve specific problems first
For your Ecommerce store
For online stores with extensive catalogs:
Test homepage-as-catalog for stores with 200+ products
Implement smart filtering to handle variety without overwhelming choice
Use AI categorization to maintain organization without manual overhead
Position social proof contextually rather than following template placement